Diabolic Sulfur

Some time ago I wrote an editorial entitled ‘Sulfur Dioxide’ and today I return to this subject because data has been published, and amply reported in the press and by bloggers, which I had in part anticipated and that raises many questions. This because when the subject is sulfur, wine is the food product that comes under fire the most. The maximum amount of SO2 allowed in wine is 240mg per liter, with an exemption of up to 400mg for those wines made with grapes that have botrytis bunch rot like Sautérnes, for example, which I think must be the most ‘sulfurous’ wine in the world, Chateau d’Yquem first among them. Many producers, all those who take great care to use just healthy grapes, never add more than 100mg of sulfites per liter, which falls to between 60mg and 80mg for the great red wines.

I do not want to say that consuming sulfur is good for you, neither is consuming alcohol over certain limits, which I admit I often do, but when I read that the amount of sulfur contained in dried fruit and potato chips, which children gobble by the kilo, is ten times that which is added to wine then I begin to get suspicious. I get the feeling that behind it all this hoopla is big industry looking for an ‘enemy’ anywhere but its own backyard and wine becomes their perfect scapegoat. This because it is produced by small and medium-sized enterprises that do not have the proper means to defend themselves. Thus it is much easier to accuse wine rather than dried prunes, potato chips, canned corn and so on, all products made by the big multinational conglomerates. Making matters worse are those who, in good faith, I hope, argue that the solution is to produce wine without any sulfur. In winemaking SO2 acts as a disinfectant, an antibacterial agent, and it is useful to keep bottled wine from ‘moving’, stopping any further alcoholic or malolactic fermentation and avoiding any excessive oxidation.

Wine can be made without sulfur that does not suffer from these abovementioned problems, however the question arises of whether the alterative measures used to do this are any less in harmful than the use of sulfur dioxide. I do not have the answer, only questions, but in the meantime I am willing to risk consuming a gram or two of sulfur a month and hope I will survive.  After all, I made it through childhood eating tons of potato chips…